How Olivia Rodrigo Drove Right Under Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Skin’

To understand and appreciate Sabrina Carpenter’s recent single “Skin” requires a comprehensive knowledge of “Drivers License.” Last month, Olivia Rodrigo released her debut single titled “Drivers License.” Rodrigo, 17, is a singer and actress best known for her roles on the Disney Channel sitcoms “Bizaardvark” and “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.”

To say that “Drivers License” was an immediate and prodigious success would be an understatement. Since its release, the song has shattered multiple records, including the biggest first week for a song on Apple Music and Spotify and the most single-day streams for a non-holiday song on Spotify. “Drivers License” has amassed enormous traction on TikTok and other social media platforms, inspiring trends and countless spoofs. Rodrigo is now the youngest singer in the United States to claim a number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100.

A driving factor (no pun intended) behind the success of “Drivers License” lies in its drama-soaked backstory. Rodrigo’s inspiration stems from teenage heartbreak — she admitted that the song details adolescent love gone wrong, though she remains ambiguous about the parties involved. Fans speculate that Rodrigo wrote the song following her breakup with “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” co-star Joshua Bassett. According to Internet gossip, following their split, Bassett entered into a relationship with fellow Disney Channel star Sabrina Carpenter.

At its core, “Drivers License” is a sad song, a heartbreak anthem evocative of drippy pop stars like Lorde, Lana del Rey, and MARINA. The single conjures a typical teenage scene: when Rodrigo gets her license (hence the title) and drives through her neighboring suburbs, the moment becomes not one of euphoric bliss, but of loneliness and heartbreak. Suddenly, the empty passenger seat beside her speaks louder than the road ahead. The familiarity of this scene is part of what makes “Drivers License” so powerful for so many. Everyone, at one point or another, has been a teenager driving alone in their car, blasting music with the windows rolled down, ruminating on what might have been.

The story should have stopped there, but it didn’t.

Joshua Bassett, Rodrigo’s ex, released a song after “Drivers License” titled “Lie Lie Lie.” Officially, “Lie Lie Lie” has nothing to do with “Drivers License” or Rodrigo. In reality, the song’s lyrics include subtle hints such as “And you’re acting so innocent / Like I’m not the only one to blame.”

Even worse, Sabrina Carpenter released a song called “Skin.” Like Bassett, Carpenter formally maintains that “Skin” has nothing to do with “Drivers License.” Like “Lie Lie Lie,” “Skin” has some shady lyrics that suggest otherwise, such as “Maybe you didn’t mean it / Maybe ‘blonde’ was the only rhyme,” a direct reference to a lyric in “Drivers License.”

The problem here is not that Rodrigo never actually rhymed “blonde” with anything. Nor is it that “Lie Lie Lie” and “Skin” are bad songs, though now might be a good time to point out that they are, in fact, terrible. “Lie Lie Lie” is old-school Jonas Brothers made about ten times worse, 2000s pop transported twenty years into the future with music that lacks any sort of complexity and depth, a pathetic echo of its predecessors. “Skin” is so unabashedly awful that there are no words to do it justice. The song is as empty and immature as its premise, which is its real problem. Rather than attempting to be a song of any real worth, “Skin” seems to target a teenage girl for her success.

Bassett is 20, Carpenter is 21, and Rodrigo is 17. Bassett and Carpenter, three and four years older than Rodrigo, obviously did not receive the memo that TikTok — and the whole of the Internet — has already taken Rodrigo’s side. Sure, Carpenter released a statement asking her fans not to send Rodrigo hate, but anyone with a basic grasp of the Internet knows that if she really wanted to shield Rodrigo from the vitriol of diehard fans, she shouldn’t have released “Skin” in the first place. (Of course, given how bad “Skin” is, perhaps Carpenter shouldn’t have released it at all.)

The final lesson here is twofold. Firstly, seemingly targeting a 17-year-old girl for her success is not a good look. Secondly, when releasing a diss track, at least make sure that it’s a good one.

—Staff writer Emerson J. Monks can be reached at emerson.monks@thecrimson.com.